Occupation Phlebotomist Role Phlebotomist Name Brian Stewart | Criminal status In prison | |
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Criminal penalty Life imprisonment, eligible for parole 2011 | ||
Brian T. Stewart (born 1966) is a former phlebotomist from Columbia, Illinois who was convicted in December 1998 of injecting his son with HIV-contaminated blood.
The incident occurred on February 6, 1992 in St Joseph's Hospital West, in Lake St. Louis, Missouri. Stewart's son, who was 11 months old at the time, was being treated in hospital for asthma and pneumonia when he was infected with the virus. The boy was diagnosed with AIDS in 1996.
On April 22, 1998, Stewart was charged with first-degree assault; the county prosecutor stated that this was because first-degree assault results in a longer sentence than an attempted murder conviction.
Prosecutors stated that Stewart was a phlebotomist who had daily access to blood, and Stewart's co-workers testified that Stewart had previously made threats to harm people using contaminated blood when he was angry. The motive behind the crime was Stewart's desire to avoid paying child support to the boy's mother. It was contended that Stewart injected his son with the virus when the boy's mother left the room, and on her return, she found her son "screaming and crying".
A Missouri jury found Stewart guilty of first-degree assault on December 6, 1998. Stewart's attorney, Joe Murphy, said that "My client has maintained all along that he is innocent" and also claimed that "Mom made an allegation and everyone ran with it."
On January 9, 1999, Stewart was sentenced to life imprisonment at St. Charles County Circuit Court. Judge Ellsworth Cundiff said that the maximum sentence was inadequate, and told Stewart "injecting a child with the HIV virus really puts you in the same category as the worst war criminal" and "when God finally calls you, you are going to burn in hell from here to eternity."
Stewart was eligible for parole in 2011.